GT Academy 2014 Gears Up for April 21st – Welcome Canada

Gentlemen, start your engines as we gear up for GT Academy 2014. The competition starts on April 21st and will be open to all entrants through June 16th.

This will be the biggest year yet in its history as our friends in Canada are added within the US competition*. This year’s GT Academy qualification demo will be available exclusively on Gran Turismo 6, so start practicing now as you now have less than a week before the start of GT Academy 2014.

As we enter our sixth installment of GT Academy in 2014, proof of the success of the virtual to reality competition can be seen in the on track results of its graduates.

Our first ever winner, Lucas Ordoñez, is racing Super GTs in Japan as his day job in 2014 and will also team up with 2012 European winner Wolfgang Reip at Le Mans this year to race Nissan’s fascinating ZEOD RC (‘Zero Emissions On Demand’) experimental car. Meanwhile, last year’s band of GT Academy winners from Europe, the USA and Germany were all in action last weekend at Monza in the Blancpain Endurance Series in a 500-plus BHP Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3.

2011 GT Academy North America winner Bryan Heitkotter has shown great promise, earning three pole positions, five front row qualifying spots and two podiums racing a Nissan 370Z NISMO for Doran racing in the Continental Tire Challenge Series in IMSA. GT Academy 2012 champion Steve Doherty notched two podium finishes in seven starts driving a Nissan GT-R in the Blancpain Endurance Series last year for RJN Motorsport. Last season’s GT Academy winner Nicholas McMillen is currently competing in the Blancpain Series and will experience his first start April 13 at Monza in Italy.

This is great and I can’t wait for it to come up, but can we get proper engine sounds, course maker, B-Spec, and proper endurance races? Can you even give us a hint that maybe PD is at least working on one of them?

i’m REALLY good behind the wheel, and with the proper formal training, i could probably be a good racing driver.

the competition is kinda biased toward people who are really good at fake driving. i mean, they’re two completely different experiences. even with a racing wheel, and pedals, it’s still not the same as the real thing.

when you’re actually driving, and you’re really good at it, the car is almost an extension of your body. you feel the G-forces, you know just when to brake, and when to hit the throttle, you know just how much to turn the wheel to make the car do what you want it to, you can tell by the sound, and vibrations, when to shift, you know where the edges of the car are, and just how far you can push that machine…

it’s not the same, sitting in a chair, with a controller, or a wheel and pedals.

I agree with you about the car to driver symbiotic relationship. I can’t race well in GT5, but I can in a real car.

Still, winners of this academy have gone on to have good success in real vehicles in real races. I suppose that they could have been good at both, real and simulation racing, and used this to launch a career. If you’re saying that a hardcore gamer won’t win road races by getting a platinum trophy, I agree with you.

i give the past winners total respect for their achievements, and i don’t begrudge them a thing. i wish them all the best.

yeah, a hardcore gamer isn’t going to win real races by winning a platinum trophy in fake driving, but being good enough to win that platinum trophy will get their foot in the door…with is both cool, and awful.

cool, because sony/polyphony/nismo are willing to give complete nobodies, who’s only accomplishment in the field, has been acing a virtual driving test, a chance….they take them, and give them proper training(which is what makes them successful in real race situations), and put them in a real car..that’s awesome. it’s also awful though, because there are probably a lot of genuinely GOOD drivers, who aren’t terribly good at GT, because of the total lack of the most important inputs(the ones i mentioned earlier) that MAKE them good drivers.

i wish there was another way to compete in the contest. i’d do almost anything for a shot.